# Seems like the Occupy protests have lost steam this week (10/19/11). Did they jump the shark? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155 "2011-10-19T16:57:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/81 "2011-10-20T21:18:07Z")
When Occupy gets its own cable news network, we can open that discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2011, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/82 "2011-10-20T22:59:26Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > No need for specifics, unless you want your judgment to be taken as insightful and cogent. It doesn’t take great insight to point out something so self-evidently incoherent. I hate to deprive you of the pleasure of working through it yourself. But I will carry on. > [@](#): > > Knowing what I know through Twitter and alternative media sources about Occupy Wall Street, from those who participated actively in its formation and those who have joined its ranks since, I have come to greatly distrust the MSM. The MSM’s efforts to mischaracterize Occupy Wall Street, and the ensuing nationwide and global Occupy movements, have seemed so remarkably blatant, so calculated to marginalize the effort and the broad base of people behind it, **that a reasonable person could only conclude that this was the result of willful intention rather than gross incompetence.** These are weasel words _par excellence_. The author doesn’t even take responsibility for this argument. Instead, he asserts that somehow it must be an inescapable conclusion of a reasonable person and not the opinion of a self-interested hack. This doesn’t insult your intelligence? The author has not exactly gone to great lengths to convince us first that such mischaracterization even exists. The best he does is this: > [@](#): > > Second, the MSM has consistently characterized Occupy Wall Street, and the Occupy movements that have sprung up throughout the United States, as being undertaken by a very small and narrow fringe element of the American population: Latte-drinking, iPad toting, spoiled, over-educated and unemployed twenty-somethings. Even now, despite this myth having been **completely and utterly debunked by every objective evaluation of the Occupy participants,** talking heads in the so-called “liberal media” have consistently sought to marginalize and ridicule the movement and its participants, likening the Occupy Wall Street protesters to those “damn, dirty hippies” of the 60’s anti-war movement. He may feel very passionately that this myth has somehow been debunked. But lots of adverbs and an assertion of objectivity do not make it so. Nothing has been “completely and utterly debunked,” and there certainly have been no “objective” assessments of any kind. But we do have some facts. The movement _is_ small: more people pack themselves into the AMC on 42nd street over the course of a weekend than have been in Liberty Park for the past month. The movement is not _all_ spoiled white kids, but the incidence of such people is a lot higher here than in the general population. I live in Manhattan, teach at NYU, and work part time in the financial district. I can walk a few blocks and see it with my own eyes. Some of my students have been occupiers. But this isn’t even the worst part of the argument. > [@](#): > > So, what’s “the thing” about Occupy Wall Street that truly scares the shit out of the political establishment and the MSM? It is that they cannot _control_ that which they truly do not understand. And even if the MSM and the political establishment take the time to come to understand Occupy Wall Street, they will never be able to manipulate it for their political gain. And that is a truly scary prospect for them. > > There are plenty of talking heads in the MSM and in both political parties offering their avuncular advice to Occupy Wall Street; to clarify and simplify its message; to create a hierarchy of leadership; to anoint spokes models armed with talking points who can appear on–you guessed it–news and political talk shows with panels of political operatives from both parties, as seen on every MSM network. And to what end? For the convenience of the MSM so they don’t have to actually learn what’s really going on in Zuccotti Park; so they can continue to overlook how an organic democratic process actually works; to make it that much easier for the Democrats and the Republicans, respectively, to deify or demonize the movement for their own political gain. None of these outcomes, of course, will advance the cause of Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement. This is a really extraordinary claim. This movement, such as it is, puts out a torrent of information about itself constantly. It takes about 30 minutes of effort and the internet to learn a huge amount about OWS. There is simply no cost at all. Yet somehow this fool claims that the entire monolithic mainstream media just can’t be bothered. Somehow it can be bothered to do the minimum level of information-gathering to run the usual daily bullshit human interest stories. It certainly bestirred itself to cover, in exhausting detail, how an “organic democratic process” worked in Egypt. Plenty of journalists were on the ground in Cairo, which presumably is farther away from anywhere in the US than NYC. The author presumes somehow that this movement _different_ insofar as the usual things that motivate the media just fail to apply. He relies on the head-nodding of the flock to accept it without even the slightest whiff of analysis. He must think we’re really stupid. Plenty of talking heads have suggested that OWS find leaders, etc, because that actually _works_. Organization and structure kept the Tea Party electorally effective and in the news for years. If anything, the media just wants to keep the story alive, and that means keeping people in Liberty Park, not ignoring them. OWS is getting so boring in the US that now, all the big protest news is from Europe, where the protesters’ actual political beliefs have almost nothing in common with their counterparts in the US. Either way, the author is a sneaky weasel-worder, he fails to motivate monolithic action by the mainstream media, and for the love of God, he’s a real estate and finance consultant. Shouldn’t he be up against the wall? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/83 "2011-10-21T05:27:23Z")
Clearly, the author of the piece has a viewpoint, clearly, so do you. Nothing wrong with that, save perhaps the quibble that your claim to an objective viewpoint is no more valid than his. He claims the OWS is misrepresented by the media as a bunch of bongo-banging misfits. You claim that his objective analysis is flawed because they really _are_ a bunch of etc. For instance, this objective observation: > [@](#): > > …movement is not all spoiled white kids, but the incidence of such people is a lot higher here than in the general population. I live in Manhattan, teach at NYU, and work part time in the financial district. I can walk a few blocks and see it with my own eyes. Some of my students have been occupiers… I can entirely understand how you can know someone is white by casual observation, but how do you know that they are “spoiled”? And where do you derive the data than enables you to make a comparison to the general population? > [@](#): > > …Plenty of talking heads have suggested that OWS find leaders, etc, because that actually works. Organization and structure kept the Tea Party electorally effective and in the news for years… True the Tea Party did a meravelous job of organizing. Seems as though in a matter of days they had leaders like Dick Armey, tour buses, professional event organizers, web sites, press releases, conventions. Boy, for a nascent grass-roots movement, they sure gathered up some money in a big ass hurry, didn’t they? Just goes to show you what good ol’ American self-reliance can do, huh? Huh? I can quite agree that his viewpoint is biased, but you seem to be eager to imply that he is lying, which is a bridge too far. Your criticism is no more empirical than his analysis, and there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you don’t try to pretend otherwise. You touch on an interesting question, in passing. You offer to bolster your authority by pointing out that some of your students are OWS. How many students you got in the Tea Party? And what is the ratio of spoiled white kids to just plain old kids? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/84 "2011-10-21T11:19:39Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Clearly, the author of the piece has a viewpoint, clearly, so do you. Nothing wrong with that, save perhaps the quibble that your claim to an objective viewpoint is no more valid than his. He claims the OWS is misrepresented by the media as a bunch of bongo-banging misfits. You claim that his objective analysis is flawed because they really _are_ a bunch of etc. My own observations are an aside. They are not necessary to my argument. I personally think he’s wrong that the OWS movement has been mischaracterized, but that’s not even what makes this a bad piece. This is a bad piece because he presumes the motivation for the media without proof and then uses it to explain the media’s behavior. This motivation, that somehow the entire mainstream media can’t be bothered to _understand_ OWS, makes no sense. Even if we believe that the media has somehow mischaracterized the movement, I cannot believe that somehow the entire institution has willfully refused to spend 30 minutes on twitter learning anything about the movement because the media routinely invests a huge amount of time investigating much stupider shit than this. There seems to be no good explanation for this. Like I said, I think the media’s incentive is not to ignore the story or be frightened by the movement but to keep it in the news. The author makes a causal argument: the media mischaracterizes the movement because it refuses to learn about OWS and at the same time, is scared of OWS. It seems quite unlikely that these two propositions can both be true at the same time. The author assumes without proof that the mischaracterization is true. He presumes a motive for the media that is completely at odds with observed behavior. Even if the mischaracterization were true, the argument still falls apart because the causal explanation is incoherent. None of these things is dependent on my personal observations. Those just add some color and an alternative viewpoint. > [@](#): > > I can entirely understand how you can know someone is white by casual observation, but how do you know that they are “spoiled”? And where do you derive the data than enables you to make a comparison to the general population? I can’t ever really _know_ if someone is spoiled. But I think you can make really good guesses about people by talking to them. Perhaps the entire world is more spoiled than I think it is. Mine is not a scientific claim, and I think it more than meets the standards of an everyday inference. > [@](#): > > True the Tea Party did a meravelous job of organizing. Seems as though in a matter of days they had leaders like Dick Armey, tour buses, professional event organizers, web sites, press releases, conventions. Boy, for a nascent grass-roots movement, they sure gathered up some money in a big ass hurry, didn’t they? Just goes to show you what good ol’ American self-reliance can do, huh? Huh? I don’t believe the Tea Party myths any more than I believe OWS. Both feed from the same populist trough, and both represent a far narrower band of interests than they would like the rest of the world to believe. 99%, my foot. > [@](#): > > I can quite agree that his viewpoint is biased, but you seem to be eager to imply that he is lying, which is a bridge too far. Your criticism is no more empirical than his analysis, and there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you don’t try to pretend otherwise. There’s nothing wrong with bias. The guy writes for HuffPo. I expect and want bias. The problem is that his causal argument is illogical, whether or not you accept the truth of the premise that he tries to explain. > [@](#): > > You touch on an interesting question, in passing. You offer to bolster your authority by pointing out that some of your students are OWS. How many students you got in the Tea Party? And what is the ratio of spoiled white kids to just plain old kids? Bolstering my authority? Good grief. Think about it as explaining my point of view. To my knowledge, I have no students affiliated with the Tea Party. This is NYU. I do have several students who did not fit into their small, Tea Party towns and are _very_ happy to be in New York. At least one of them is gay and took an enormous amount of shit for it growing up. I have my suspicions about spoilage, but i will get back to you after I grade and return their midterms next week. ---
**Author:** ![Buchanan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Buchanan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buchanan)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/85 "2011-10-21T13:37:12Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Then that is the goal of the OWS potestors also. Like the Tea Party, their signs say they are angry about all sorts of things, but since it is all about the elections, that must their ultimate goal. In fact, that is the goal of all protest movements, since there is no other way to effect change. It’s always about the elections. Completely false. All structural change is through revolution and coup d’etat, not elections. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/86 "2011-10-21T13:52:40Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I’m sorry, but your comment doesn’t make any sense. > > The Tea Parties were formed months after the 2008 election in response to Obama’s stimulus plan. If I’m getting the your arguments correct, you think OWS is a flash in the pan because it hasn’t influenced an election. My rebuttal is that there hasn’t been an election in the interim, so this point is asinine. The other part of it seems to be that you think the Tea Party rallies were very large several months after they started being organized and that the turnout in OWS is small. My rebuttal was that there just hasn’t been that much time since the OWS protests have started, and it would be more fair to compare to the Tea Party rallies at a similar stage in their development. And indeed, the initial Tea Party rallies were rather small. And, do you seriously not remember how camera angles and such were manipulated to make them appear better attended than they actually were? Heck, this still goes on with Tea Party rallies. You could just as easily say that democracy in the US was doomed to failure in 1795 because the UK had a stable functioning government for hundreds of years, while the colonies were a bunch of yokels who had only experienced it for a few years. As I recall, there were indeed several people who made this claim. The argument is ridiculous because the a definitive comparison cannot actually be made until more time has passed. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/87 "2011-10-21T15:19:54Z")
> [@Buchanan](#): > > Completely false. All structural change is through revolution and coup d’etat, not elections. **After** we had a revolution here, we completely restructured national government through lawful electoral means, setting up a system where it will always be easier (and almost always safer) for discontented factions to get what they want that way than any other. You **really** think there’s ever going to be another revolution here? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/88 "2011-10-21T16:27:19Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > **After** we had a revolution here, we completely restructured national government through lawful electoral means, setting up a system where it will always be easier (and almost always safer) for discontented factions to get what they want that way than any other. > > You **really** think there’s ever going to be another revolution here? The system has been corrupted to help the few over the masses of people. There are ways to change things inside the system, but the powerful have taken them over. We have little recourse in polite politics. A revolution like France may not happen ,but the discontent with what our country is becoming is real. The occupations are a message. The repubs are not only not listening but berating the messengers. It may not be wise. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/89 "2011-10-21T17:54:34Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > When Occupy gets its own cable news network, we can open that discussion. Well leaving aside MSNBC, there’s that network Al Gore started, the one Keith Olbermann’s on, or did that disappear already? ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/90 "2011-10-21T19:33:18Z")
[**Jon Stewart Rips Into GOP Hypocrisy on 99%ers**](http://vodpod.com/watch/15573289-jon-stewart-scorn-in-the-usa?c=iamnotinvisible&u=iamnotinvisible) As per usual, Jon gets it in one. ---
**Author:** ![Buchanan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Buchanan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buchanan)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/91 "2011-10-21T20:05:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > **After** we had a revolution here, we completely restructured national government through lawful electoral means, setting up a system where it will always be easier (and almost always safer) for discontented factions to get what they want that way than any other. > > You **really** think there’s ever going to be another revolution here? Ten years ago I would have said it was unthinkable and anyone who thought otherwise was a nutjob. Now I am not so sure. I can imagine some states going bankrupt, perhaps in the Southwest or California, serving as the catalyst. Same story with the EU: I can envision two or more countries walking and reinstalling their own currencies so as to control their own liquidity and money policy. And I’m not the only one, either. You can see exactly what the market thinks by getting a quote on the Euro Break-up Index from World Spread (traded on the LSE): [http://www.worldspreads.com/en/Spread-Betting-with-Us/spread-betting-offers/euro-break-up.aspx](http://www.worldspreads.com/en/Spread-Betting-with-Us/spread-betting-offers/euro-break-up.aspx). Bid and ask are still between 1 and 2 years but I think that is high… ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/92 "2011-10-21T20:27:46Z")
> [@Buchanan](#): > > I can imagine some states going bankrupt, perhaps in the Southwest or California, serving as the catalyst. Nice user name/post combo. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/93 "2011-10-21T21:40:38Z")
The TPers got coopted and neutered almost instantly to serve as another tool in conventional politics. Not sure why anyone would brag about that. I guess that’s the best one can hope for in the current system. Otherwise protests are only good for picking up the opposite sex (you’ll impress her if you get tazed, bro). ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155/94 "2011-10-28T17:57:19Z")
Looks like Occupy Oakland is taking the lead on the press. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Wall Street _what?_ Nothing like a vet with a fractured skull to trump a kitchen strike. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seems-like-the-occupy-protests-have-lost-steam-this-week-10-19-11-did-they-jump-the-shark/600155.md?page=4)